Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest - Sheldon Turner round

Every now and then, I check back in with the folks at The Writers Store to see what contests they're running. In particular, I've enjoyed the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest with its pre-set loglines. Each round of the contest has a logline provided by a different film producer/writer/director which must be used in the submissions. Where the would-be screenwriter goes with it is entire up to them.

I've taken a few of these loglines in the past and done some brainstorming of ideas. A few were almost workable and I think one got to the point where I started working on the opening scenes. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I've gotten. But as I like the combined challenges of screenwriting and working off someone else's idea, I'll keep going back.

So another round just started, this one's logline provided by Sheldon Turner (BAFTA Winner and Academy Award nominee for Up In The Air, and writer of X-Men: First Class, Law Abiding Citizen, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and The Longest Yard per the contest website). The logline is:

A corrupt detective with one month left to live tries to make all the wrongs right in a wobbly road to redemption, becoming the cop – and the person – they always wanted to be in the process.

On first read, I thought it was a bit narrow. The more I think about it, though, the more I like the options. Why only one month to live? What sort of wrongs need to be set right? What happened to the idealistic cop to set him or her down this path in the first place? A modern cop drama is also the first place most people will go, but why not a supernatural thriller or sci fi action adventure? Could easily be a comedy (there's that teasing word "wobbly" in there).

Time to let that one stew for a little bit, see what the imagination comes up with.

Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest

So, on top of my dabbling in writing fiction, I've also considered writing screenplays. Movies, in particular, as I'm not sure I'm necessarily cut out for the format of a television series. I took a couple wild cracks at movie scripts during the Script Frenzy "contests" - usually achieving the intended page count goal but not finishing with anything resembling a complete script. Each attempt was fun and educational, though, and I still have that nagging desire to see one through to the finish.

Which brings me to another contest - this one much more legitimately deserving of that term - that I've had my eye on for a year or so now, the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest. This one is targeted primarily at new, aspiring writers, and has a low barrier to entry - you only have to submit the first 15 pages of a script for a logline provided by someone well established in the industry. Ten finalists then work with one of the Writers Store's staff over the course of a couple months, getting valuable feedback with each new set of pages added to the script until finished and then a winner is chosen. Really does sound pretty ideal for a first timer.

Well, with each new round of the contest, I've sat down a brainstormed a few different sketches for the logline. Some had a bit of potential, but none sucked me in and demanded to be written. And, thusly, I have yet to try to enter the contest.

A new round of the contest just began and I'm in the process of working up some ideas. The logline was provided by Edward Saxon (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and others) - "After a storm destroys her small farm, killing her mother and father, an adolescent girl is sent off on a journey of survival."

Not bad. It provides quite a bit of structure, while remaining wide open. I immediately discarded the first couple thoughts that came to mind, most surrounding tornadoes in the mid-west (something with which I grew up) and the recent hurricane disasters, figuring it was best to head in an unexpected direction. I now have three very rough ideas, two are hard sci fi and one is magic fantasy, and in most all variants of these the "small farm" has nothing to do with produce. There are lots of different kinds of farms and I wanted to use an unexpected interpretation.

Now the tricky bit - fleshing these out to see if I can get one to suck me in and demand to be written...